The "At Risk" Grant

Within the next few weeks, I’ll move from my current building to another one on the compound. My new “home” will look exactly like my current home. There will be the same number of bunks (96), same number of showers, sinks and commodes; same dimension building. The difference will be the guys residing there.



I’m one of seven “dorm mentors” for a college/technical training dorm. All seven mentors have Bachelor’s degrees at a minimum. Two of us have law degrees; one has his masters in chemistry. Approximately half the men are enrolled under a federal grant as students pursuing an Associate’s degree through the local community college. There are five terms during the year, three or four classes per term. Instructors come in from the “outside world” to teach their classes. It normally takes an inmate three full years to earn his degree.


The other forty inmates are enrolled in a new initiative aimed at “high risk” offenders. These are men who have had repeated run-ins with law enforcement – usually involving drug dealing and using. They scored “high” on a profile test indicating there is a significant likelihood these guys will get out (all are within two years of release) and return to the same criminal behavior that led to their imprisonment because (1) the deck is heavily stacked against felons, and (2) these guys have limited, marketable skills.


The program – funded by a $750,000 grant and operated by the community college – combines a college general studies curriculum with intense IT training. Four days and evenings a week (Monday through Thursday, 12:30 – 3:30 and 6:30 – 9:00) these guys will be in class.


When they are released there will be resources available to assist them with job placement, dealing with probation issues, and staying clear of the environments and impulses that put them in here.


It’s a laudable, worthy goal and I was excited when the principal asked me to be a mentor.


This program should be the standard for prison rehabilitation for almost every inmate. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t even be considered had the economy not sunk into this long, painful recession. For too long, the public has been told a huge lie by politicians: “You can lock people up for long periods of time without repercussions”.


That lie has led to Virginia’s explosion in its inmate population and the geometric growth in cost and manpower to operate its prison system. $1 billion plus annually. Think about that. $1 billion to operate a system that holds slightly less than 40,000 offenders. And that $1 billion doesn’t include the cost to operate DCE (the Department of Corrections Education, the largest school district in the Commonwealth). It doesn’t include the millions of dollars spent each year by the Attorney General’s office defending (and losing a fair number this year) lawsuits brought by and on behalf of the incarcerated. It does not include the millions spent on welfare, mental health services, community outreach projects; to monitor and maintain broken men and women released from the meat grinder known as corrections who have received little in the way of actual rehabilitation and training while locked up.


While people are busy thanking George Allen for abolishing parole as Governor (a decision I too applauded at the time), someone should ask him if it was worth the cost, in dollars and lives damaged. If he was honest, he’d have to answer no.


This new program is a good first step. But, it is merely a band aid on a severed artery. The entire system is broken. Every man and woman that comes under the control of the Department of Corrections is at risk. Prison reform must become a reality. The cost to do otherwise is astronomical.